The Pop Life

By Jon Pareles

Published: January 5, 1994

Along with "Auld Lang Syne" and fireworks, top-10 lists have mushroomed into a cottage industry around the first of each year. Those who pay attention will notice that pop critics don't share anything close to the unanimity that movie critics often have in their selections. Among the favorite albums chosen by the four New York Times critics who regularly cover nonclassical music, there is no album comparable to "Schindler's List" or "The Piano" in popularity. Critical tastes, in fact, seem to diverge more sharply this year than in previous top-10 roundups.

Here are the best albums of the year in the views of Jon Pareles, the chief pop critic; Stephen Holden; Peter Watrous, jazz critic, and Danyel Smith.

"Exile in Guyville," Liz Phair (Matador). Sex and love, betrayal and revenge, hope and resignation from a matter-of-fact songwriter whose guitar riffs are sturdier than her relationships.

"Siamese Dream," Smashing Pumpkins (Virgin). Collegiate rock melts into psychedelia with huge fuzz-toned guitar riffs, meticulous arrangements that surge and drift and stomp, and lyrics that question as much as they proclaim.

"Reachin' (A Refutation of Time and Space)," Digable Planets (Pendulum/Elektra). Jazz vamps, rolling along on acoustic bass lines, carry smart, amiable raps from a group that welcomes everyone to the party.

"In Utero," Nirvana (Geffen). Sickened by its own success, Nirvana drops the gloss of its multimillion-selling "Nevermind" and reverts to punky rawness, with blasts of guitar, howls of confusion and melody despite it all.

"Traffic From Paradise," Rickie Lee Jones (Warner Brothers). Visions of angels and echoes of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" on an album so fragile and hopeful that it's completely unfashionable.

"Star," by Belly (Sire). Transparent but steely songs that bend clean-lined folk-rock into elusive parables about female archetypes from daughters and sisters to witches and dolls.

"Janet," Janet Jackson (Virgin). A slick big-budget album that surveys dance-floor trends and current pop, held together not by a larger-than-life personality but by its determination to seduce.

"Live MCMXCIII," Velvet Underground (Sire). The short-lived reunion of the definitive New York rockers showed why bands everywhere are still stealing ideas from their lean, unsparing, elemental tales of the urban demimonde.